Throughout all this ancient principality of Bidache the spirit of feudality has been effaced in these later Republican days, a thing the kings of France and Navarre and the parlément de Pau could not accomplish. As in other parts of Béarn and the Basque provinces, it is now entirely swallowed by "_la nationalité française_." The Duc de Grammont still possesses the Château de Guiche, and the non-forfeitable titles of his ancestors; but, virtually, he is no more than any other citizen. Just north from Bidache, set whimsically on a hillside above the Adour, is the feudal village of Hastingues. It was an English creation, founded by John of Hastings towards 1300, for Edward I. It is crowded to the very walls with curious old houses in which its inhabitants live with much more tranquillity than in feudal times. The fourteenth-century fortifications are still much in evidence. Up the river from Hastingues is Peyrehorade, or in the old Béarnais tongue Pérorade, literally _roche-percée_. It is the metropolis of the region, and has a population of twenty-five hundred simple folk who live tight little lives, and not more than once in a generation get fifty miles away from their home. The Vicomtes d'Orthe fortified the city in olden times, and the ruined château-fort of Aspremont on the hillside overlooking the river valley and the town tells the story of feudal combat far better than the restored and made-over edifices of a contemporary period. Its pentagonal donjon of the sixteenth century is as grim and imposing a tower of its class as may be conceived. Below, along the river bank, is the sixteenth-century château of Montréal, its walls still standing flanked with grim, heavy, uncoiffed towers. It is all sadly disfigured, like its fellow on the heights; but the very sadness of it all makes it the more emphatic as a historical monument of the past. In the villages round about the dominant industry appears to be _sabot_-making, as in the Basque country it is the making of _espadrilles_. Each is a species of shoe-making which knows not automatic machinery, nor ever will. Lying between Basse Navarre and Béarn was the Pays de Soule, with Mauléon and Tardets as its chief centres of population. The district has a bit of feudal history which is interesting. It was a region of mediocre extent--not more than thirty leagues square--but with a political administration more complex than any Gerrymandering administration has dared to conceive since. The district was divided into three _Messageries_, Haute Soule, Basse Soule and Arbailles. Each of these divisions had at its head a functionary called a _Messager_, and each was in turn divided again into smaller parcels of territory called _Vics_, each of which had a sort of beadle as an official head, called a _Degan_. Popular election put all these officials in power, but the Courts of Justice were administered by the king of France, as heir to the kings of Navarre.